Environment Life

Pumas returning to Patagonia, potentially impacting penguins

Fahad Redha

February 11, 2026
3 min read

Pumas returning to Patagonia, potentially impacting penguins

As conservation efforts work to protect one species, a knock-on effect ends up harming another. The success from conservationists in helping pumas return in Patagonia has resulted in penguins, which took advantage of the absence of the predators, seeing their numbers affected.

The question at the heart of this is should conservation efforts focus on the protection of one species if doing so could harm another? This is especially a difficult question to answer when the landscape, such as Monte Leon National Park in the Patagonian coast of Argentina, is still recovering from human activity.

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After cattle ranching in Southern Argentina came to an end in 1990, pumas began to return to their historic habitat. This brought them into contact with Magellanic penguins for the firs time in modern history.

The flightless birds had previously travelled from offshore islands to the mainland, thanks to a lack of land predators. With few defences against carnivores, they were an easy target for the cats. Until recently, it was not known how this was affecting penguin population numbers.

Since the park was established in 2004, colonies of the birds have been observed closely by Centro de Investigaciones de Puerto Deseado of the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral researchers, working closely with rangers from the national park. Between 2007 and 2010, they recorded penguin carcasses linked to attacks by pumas.

The team partnered with Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) to analyse the data and study the long-term impact on the colony.

They estimated that over 7,000 adult penguins had been killed during the four-year study period, many of which were only partially eaten or not at eaten at all, suggesting that the attacks were not solely for food. They represented around 7.6% of the adult population or around 93,000 individuals.

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